Many third party applications use scanned documents for their applications. These documents are often handled in a generic manner without being able to add information that could benefit a user's workflow, e.g. an account name to file under. Without the additional, value-add information, the documents may not be processed by the applications in the most optimal way, or they may require additional processing to complete the intended workflow.
One way to alleviate this problem is to add metadata to the document when it is scanned. Metadata provides the ability for users to add information to their jobs, either at the walkup screen or during the programming of the templates, that assists in the workflow of the documents, thereby increasing the effectiveness of processing and also cutting the processing time down. However, when a scanning device captures a document, the means for entering metadata may be limited. Some scanning devices, or multi-function devices, lack an adequate user interface for entering document metadata. Some current solutions require that the metadata be specified in advance in a “scan template” or a machine readable “paper UI”.
The ability for a third party application to specify a set of needed information that can be entered before a job is scanned enables the application to take full advantage of the processing ability of the application, as well as streamline the workflow for an application. When the scanning device user interface can be used as the input for this value-add information, it eliminates additional steps in the workflow for manual processing of a document after scanning. It can also provide additional information that may otherwise be lost once the document is scanned.
Embodiments include a user interface to allow users to customize their jobs by adding metadata attribute/value pairs. The attributes could be added either to the job template, thus applying to all jobs, or to an individual job. The attribute values would then be available for use by other, perhaps third party, applications in subsequent steps of the workflow.
Embodiments include a method for creating a metadata field in a template, which includes receiving a template selection, receiving a selection of a new metadata field, receiving properties of a metadata field to be added to the template, storing the properties of the metadata field, and downloading the metadata field to a scanning device in response to a signal from the scanning device.